Aggressive treatment of HIV infection shortly after infection has made it possible to live symptom-free without medicines for HIV patients.
While research on a vaccine continues, early treatment with the current AIDS drugs also could prevent some people from getting infected, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in Bethesda, MD, said at the International AIDS Conference here.
The new drugs, such as the integrase inhibitors, combined with early treatment of stopping viral replication of HIV with highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART), may help in identifying all the stable reservoirs of HIV and then eliminating HIV from all of them. Scientists should conduct more studies to assess that theory, he added.
Researchers are also hoping to develop a vaccine targeted at people with a specific genetic makeup in the next two decades that might help AIDS victims. Although two vaccine experiments have failed in this regard, the researchers have not lost hope.
Scientists said massive investment is needed to scale up the manufacture of antiretroviral drugs for up to 110 million people as only one person is getting the drugs for every three people infected. International donors need to think in terms of "pension fund" type provisions to plan for the scale of antiretroviral provision that will be needed by 2031.
AIDS 2031 is a research and advocacy project launched by UNAIDS and the program will look at technologies, advocacy, financing and prevention, and will report in 2009.
The conference heard preliminary views on the challenges facing the world in its response to HIV between now and 2031.
